‘The RCMP are so good and I know how much they are hurting’

Brookside resident Steve MacIntosh has been on pins and needles since the Wednesday night RCMP shootings in Moncton. His younger sister lives in the area where residents have been confined to their homes for safety reasons as the manhunt for the alleged shooter continues.

BROOKSIDE - It’s mid afternoon Thursday and after a long night and day of wait, watch and worry, Steve MacIntosh is nearly an emotional basket case.

“Absolute fear,” he tells a reporter of his mindset.

“It’s my little sister … she’s in the triangle.”

Since late Wednesday night, when he first learned that three RCMP members had been fatally shot and two others were injured, along with the massive manhunt that followed, MacIntosh has been practically glued to the television set, waiting anxiously for the nightmarish saga to end.

The “triangle” to which he refers is the area within Moncton where police are looking for the alleged killer and where residents have been advised to remain in their homes.

His sister is Elaine Stanley who lives in Moncton and since Wednesday evening when the tragic events began to unfold, she has been holed up in her basement along with husband Cameron and their two teenage sons.

“It’s been pretty bad,” he says, of the emotional toll of waiting for things to play out. “I have not slept.”

As the communications and outreach assistant to Colchester Musquodoboit Valley MP Scott Armstrong, MacIntosh says he is quite accustomed to dealing with stress and pressure. But this time it’s different.

“I’ve faced a lot of stress but when it happens to you… ,” he says, with obvious emotion in his trailing voice.

MacIntosh once lived in Moncton and what immediately came to mind as he took grasp of the situation, he says, was living through the reign of terror that people in the area faced when the serial killer who became known as the Monster of the Miramichi was on the run in 1989.

“What I said to my sister (when he talked to her in a telephone call), it just reminded me of when Allan Legere was loose, when he escaped from the hospital

and the streets were empty. There weren’t people around. It was like a western ghost town. And that’s the impression that she gave me, talking to her last night.”

Having worked with the RCMP in his professional role during visits by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the area, MacIntosh also expressed concern for those involved.

“The RCMP are so good and I know how much they are hurting,” he says. “I’ve just been watching it on T.V. and waiting for them to get him so he can face justice.

“I’m just waiting. I know they will catch him and I don’t know how that will end.”

Brookside resident Steve MacIntosh has been on pins and needles since the Wednesday night RCMP shootings in Moncton. His younger sister lives in the area where residents have been confined to their homes for safety reasons as the manhunt for the alleged shooter continues.